HDR Photography: Adjust Color in Photomatix

To adjust and enhance the color in your HDR image that has been tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, you use the Color Saturation, Saturation Highlights, Saturation Shadows, and Temperature settings.

Make color adjustments to suit your taste. You might not need to alter these controls if your baseline settings can be suitably applied to most images. If necessary, start color adjustments with Color Saturation to control the overall intensity of the image. Use Saturation Highlights and Saturation Shadows for special effects or to solve problems in those particular tonal regions.

This figure is, in fact, a rejected alternative. Even if you trust your baseline settings, fiddle with them to make sure they look good. In this case, Color Saturation is lowered to 60 (from 80) to see whether the image would look better without as much color intensity.

These are the subjective decisions you make while you tone map. You may prefer the stronger colors for this image, which can be seen better in the small crop of a colorful area of the wall. Lesson: Always explore alternative settings — this time, decreased saturation.